Secrets of the Amateurs

... what happened was, I thought I was wrong, but it turned out I was right after all. For the last 6 weeks or so, most of my online play has consisted of MTTs. Having previously stated that they weren't worth playing online, I changed my mind and had a spin, trying out a few different plays.

While I was definitely playing better, my results didn't show it as I returned a loss of $930 over 36 tournaments. This was slightly offset by a $250 profit in Pokerstars super-satellites (the $36 ones), but nevertheless obviously disappointing. What happened was I only managed one decent finish, 2nd place in just about the smallest tournament I played during that time. I would still expect to win long-term, but the long term in tournaments is loooooong, and that's the problem.

A comment Aksu made over on Big Dave D's blog struck a chord. He basically said that MTTs aren't really suited to on-line play because they have a defined beginning and end. Deciding to play MTTs online is taking away the great advantage of Internet poker - you can start and end any time you like 24/7 (apologies if I have paraphrased the comment inaccurately, but that was what I took from it). Cash games you can log in and out as you please, even Sit and Goes you can certainly start any time, even if you half to wait half an hour to finish sometimes.

So I think I will ration my on-line tournament play to money-added events. Do shop around to find these if you are a tournament player, but I'm not going to go as far as telling you where they are. The one forum post that makes me say "Shut up shut up SHUT UP" is "wow look at these extra money tournaments here's where you can find them". Just shop around ok :-)

As for my $700 online, I'm not complaining. They helped me work out a better tournament strategy overall that has pulled in about $4000 live in the same time. But if I'm playing online, I'll stick with the Sit and Goes, or learn the limit cash games, and maybe the odd WSOP/WPT type satellite if I think it's value.